Temple of the East

Here I have my finished hero's for the Temple of the East. With both Temple of the North and Temple of the West Hero's out now I wanted to finish off my griffin army and get the rest of the hero's finished. I kept Archo's color scheme similar to the one shown in his artwork as he heads the temple and his "thematic" coloring is the bases for the rest of the Temple of the East. Also he fits well with the prepainted templars already. With these colors in mind I redesigned Mira's coloring to match. Leaving her hair alone as that is a focus of her as a character. So I opted for a white robe to match her older borthers as well as gold colored trim to her armor to match his as well. I spent some time applying a red/orange/yellow wash to the base of her blade Hauteclaire to help give the sense of heat to the object without having it become the focus of the whole blade and thus apply to much color not on the minature itself and draw your eyes away from Mira to her blade. I think the effect came off alright, its a bit chalky looking. Still for my first real attempt at that kind of effect I think it worked. Also her white robe didn't work as well as I would have liked. The black wash just dosn't work with it and provides to much contrast making the robes themselves look to flat. I think in the future I will water down a midtone grey to wash with white. I think that will provide a better transition than black does. sadly although I do pretty good with the faces of men.... Mira comes out looking a bit like a crossdresser rather than a woman. Maybe it is the skulpt but I think not (based on some future posts with women figures you will see soon.)

Work in Progress: Tarascus

I've gotten my Tarascus in the mail recently and after spending some time cleaning it up and doing a bit of repair to the figure, some of the parts had a few chipped of part from shipping/storage that need to be reattached. I primed this baby and began the long work of basecoating it. This thing is very impressive in size and I have to say I can't wait to field it against my opponents. It will be a lot of fun to see the look on their face as this Titan arrives ont he table to lay waste to their army.

After getting a good start at basecoating most of the figure I got stuck on deciding what colors to paint the leather bits of the figure. So while I was deciding on that I decided to do a more extensive paint job on the face and get a good feel for how it would come out in the end. So I painted up the mouth and face as well as the eyes. Now this isn't a finished job with the head but it's mostly their. None of the metal has any weathering effects yet (or highlighting/washing). I have to say this thing has been both a joy and a bit annoying to paint. I always hate the first steps of the paint process. Base coating a miniature to me is less about art and so much about just working, and this thing is huge. I have been taking breaks from it to keep myself from burning out on it. I mean you can only paint the same brown for some long before you want to pull your eyes out.

Valley of Divine Tears

I wanted to drop this up here so you could all see what I was working on right now. I'm designing this to work similarly to the campaign system for Operation Frostbite, another of Rackham's products for AT-43 their Sci-Fi miniature game. One of the things I have felt for some time that Confrontation really lacked was a campaign system to help gamers organize a story and theme around their games. Being a long time tabletop RPG player I ahve always tried to come up with a story for my miniature games. It's part of what I love about the playing them. Beyond just the enjoyment I get from painting my own miniatures.

So let this be the official announcment of a work in progress the Campaign book Valley of Divine Tears. So far its shapping up to include ten missions. I wanted to use a larger mission map than Operation Frostbite uses. Being a fantasy game I didn't feel that three zones spread far appart was appropriate. Also Frostbite makes use of the future tech of aircraft to allow players to drop ship their armies from one of the campaign zones to the others. This would be inappropriate for Confrontation so I opted for a larger single campaign area. The upswing is their is more area to fight over. One down swing to the campaign system so far is that week 1 is effectivly a paperwork week with no games. (You simply can't move enough to get to an opponent.) However it's also designed with a certain timing in mind to seperate phase 1 from phase 2. So I think the loss of the first week is not an issue. It is like the deployment phase of a regular game of Confrontation anyway. So effectivly the campaign is a game over the game. Each of the 7 weeks corresponding to a game round of a regular game of confrontation, (the first round being deployment then 6 regular rounds).

I have basic themes set up for all 10 missions, as well as some basic design done on about half of them, couple are pretty wel wrapped up. The campaign will also use an MP system, although no RP will be used within the missions themselves the MP gained will be used to replenish lost troops, re-organize units, and purchase extra's to boost performance at various missions on the map. The campaign will use a slightly modified deployment rules to allow for more variety and intresting extra's for MP purchase. Deployment will utilize face down unit cards rather than the unit's themselves. The cards will be placed a minimum of 20cm from enemy units, mostly important for scouts. Once the full deployment phase, including scouts, is completed the players replace the cards with the units representing them. This will allow for example the use of campaign effects like... SPIES!: Choose one mission for the upcoming week, for that mission your opponent will deploy his units rather than cards during deployment as your spies provide intelligence for your commander.

Well I hope you all are finding something here to look forward to. I will keep you all abreast of my progress on this campaign book as the work goes forward.

Griffin Conscripts: Part 3

Just a group shot of the unit together to give a feel for them on the table. Nothing really much more than that to say.

Griffin Conscripts: Part 2

Here are the last 4 griffin Conscripts. Similar comments as last time really. Shaded them with various metal tones to give the metal armor a better look, while still not resorting to NMM. I used a Gold/Brass trim although more in style with the Lion army I found very appealing on these guys. Nothing much more to add here honestly.

Griffin Conscripts: Part 1

As stated earlier I completed these guys at the same time as the Exorcist and the Tiger's of Dirz. I went for a little bit of excess on the brass trim, and even though it seems to make them look a little more like they belong in the Lion army, rather than in the Griffin, I couldn't help myself as it really seemed to bring out the details on these guys. I found the faces to be extremly annoying as the heads are one part witht he body. Making it very difficult to apply the brush to them in any detailed maner. The face and neck of the armor was constantly in the way.











You can really see here how I tend to base coat metal with a dark metal color, apply a black wash over all of it then highlight my way back up with the original metal paint and a shade or two lighter from their. I am not one for NMM, but I feel adding this 3-4 tone metalic seems to add a lot to elements painted in metal. I kept he shields metal free. I felt those elements would be more of a painted wood or steel, insteed of exposed metals like their armor.

Griffin Exorcist

I painted this figure in the same week as the Tigers of Dirz as well as the Griffin Conscripts I will be putting up next. Again I was trying to get as many minaitures done in my few days of painting as I could. When I started out I would get one miniature done over weeks, with hours and hours spent on them. I want to say something along the lines of 10-15 hours a miniature. Now I tend to get them done in 3-5 hours of work. A big improvment, and yet my painting quality has also rissen even with that decreased time. This piece took perhaps 3 hours in total. It was a bit simplistic in sceme, but then again its not a character piece but rather a specialist for units. Once again I felt the red cloth came out really well. As did the holy relic on the front of the miniature.

As always you can click the images to see full size photo's.